Last December, “Nature Communications” published the first results from a collaboration of experimental and theoretical physicists of the Department of Physics. These results concern the study of the quantum properties of the lattice vibrations produced by a “pump” laser pulse and subsequently monitored by less intense “probe” pulses.

The development of methodologies capable of identifying peculiar quantum vibrational states of matter known as “squeezed” has been made possible by the synergy between two approaches to the problem. On one hand, the “pump and probe” techniques of the T-Rex lab at the synchrotron Elettra directed by Fulvio Parmigiani and Daniele Fausti, on the other one the theoretical description of the photon-phonon interaction in photo-excited transparent crystals, like quartz, elaborated by the theoretical group of the Department of Physics directed by Fabio Benatti.